Cooking with Languages: How Kids can Learn a Language in the Kitchen

Do you like to cook? Does your child love helping out in the kitchen? Along with the various skills your child can learn through cooking and preparing food, they can also learn a language!

I would like to introduce Lisa from Cooking with Languages who has some fantastic tips on how your child can learn a language in the kitchen. No matter how old your child is, they can have fun learning new phrases and vocabulary, simply through preparing meals or playing with simple food.

Lisa Sadleir is a British born mother to two bilingual children. Educated in the UK and France, she has lived in Spain since 1991. She holds an Hons degree in European Business Administration and is experienced in teaching English and Spanish as a foreign language.

A true foodie lover, she is as passionate about languages, and has a sound understanding of the obstacles faced by foreign language learners. Follow Lisa on Facebook,Twitter and Instagram.

Learning languages in the kitchen with your mini chefs

Children are easily excitable. When they are excited and interested in something they absorb more. They learn without realising. So learning a language matched with something they like to do, is a great way to help them improve their skills without them realising it.

Children use all of their senses while cooking. By helping them learn about food and cooking, you help them to become more comfortable with different foods, and can even make them healthier eaters. Pressuring young children to eat vegetables at the dinner table is known to be counterproductive – it actually increases resistance to healthy foods. In a nutshell, kids like what they know, and they eat what they like. So, making food and cooking fun has many benefits.

Create stickies (and if you are artistic, add drawings too) of Kitchen items

Play the “hot/cold” game. The idea is that your child has to guess which word (in the target languages) is the correct name for the items in your kitchen. As they get closer to the item, you say “hotter” (in your target language) and as the move further away you say “colder” (in your target language)

Choose a recipe together of a dish or desert that you would like to make.

If your target language is Spanish or English, you can choose one of the recipes from the Cooking with Languages Activity Cookbook and work together with your child.

Before you start cooking:

-Look at the ingredients, practice the words together (listen to the audio on our website for help)
-Make a shopping list together, for the required ingredients
-Visit the supermarket and purchase the ingredients with your child, repeating the words and quantities as shown in our book

When you are ready to cook:

Tell your child (in the target language) what they need to get ready, item by item (using the book for reference)

-From the fridge, we need…
-From the cupboard, we need…
-Follow the instructions, step by step and make the simple and scrummy recipes.
-Practice phrases and expressions to say what you love, like, don’t like.

We have a simple and scrummy recipe to share with you. It is really easy to follow.

Introducing Arthur Apple’s Pancakes!

This is one of the recipes in our Activity Cookbook:

Ingredients

How to prepare your pancake mixture:

-Sieve the flour and a pinch of salt into a large bowl.
Make a hole in the centre of the flour and add the egg and some milk.
-Whisk all the ingredients together until you have a smooth liquid.
-Add the remaining milk and whisk again.

How to cook your pancakes:

-Heat a small amount of oil in a frying pan.
-Remove the excess oil before adding the pancake mix.
-Add a large spoon of mix to the frying pan and spread it over the base (the easiest way is to rotate the frying pan slowly).
-As the pancake sets, loosen it with a spatula and flip over (use a plate if you are not confident flipping).

Arthur’s Perfect Pancake Tips:

-For skinny French style pancakes, make sure your mixture is nice and runny.ie. add lots of the milk
-For fatter American style pancakes, use less milk to make a thicker mixture.

There are so many ways how children learn a language in the kitchen. These are just a few simple ideas. We have many more to share with you! At Cooking with Languages, we are on a mission to create oodles of language-loving superheroes.

What other ideas do you have for using food and cooking for introducing new languages?

Chontelle is a Certified ESL teacher, writer and mother of two bilingual kids. She offers practical advice for parents seeking to raise bilingual or multilingual children; with inspiration, support and strategies based on her experience as a parent, and as a teacher of a foreign language to children.

Sharon Bird

What a fantastic way for children, of all ages, to learn a new language through cookery. To have fun, challenge their cookery skills, make a mess and then able to eat the food at the end of a lesson. Children will love the chance to do this at school or at home!

This is a great idea and a fantastic resource! It unites my 3 favourite things: spending time with my kids, cooking and teaching them lots of minority language!What better excuse to get kids into the kitchen while at the same time providing language exposure!